The Way For Students - 135 Chapter 4. School And Study Section 1. School And Teacher
3. Education And Goodness
You have a morality class among the subjects in school, don't you? What do you call this class? [The right life] Right life? In the class your teachers teach you not to pay a rascal with a wicked act, but to be patient. When you see a man doing a wrong and you have no confidence in your own ability to do something against him, keep away from such company. To set apart yourself from evildoing is to separate yourself. (30-308)
Although in Korea today there are many universities, middle and high schools, and some institutes, they don't know the definition of good and evil. They say the population of Korea is sixty million. They only know the word "good and evil," but they don't know the standard from which they can say good and evil. What is the prime standard? They don't know it.
This is a great problem. If something is a little different from yours, you say it is wrong. "I am in this way, but he is in that way. So he is a bad guy." As you say like this, you tend to say wrong for everything. When you say "that bad guy," what is the standard on which you are able to say like that? You don't have the standard. When you use a changing standard, you will be on the brink of collapse. judging by the present situation of our society, we have no prime standard. In every measuring instrument like a dial scale, the standard is never changed.
As it is never changed, it can be the unit. What in the world has this never changing unit? It is the question we should answer. (136-110)
No matter how we human beings continue to live, born in the world, we should live our own lives. While living our lives, we follow many ways of life. It is easy to do a sinful deed which will corrupt us very easily. But it is hard to keep on doing good, which will not let us fall into a trap. The easy thing to do is an evil thing. For this reason we have lots of sanctions and laws against doing easy things.
When you are asked, "Which way do you want to follow, the right way, or the wrong way?" you answer, "I will follow the right way!" Everyone of you have said that from childhood. From the days of a baby to the days of the primary school, middle school, high school, and university, the more education you have taken, the more you have been taught to go to the right way. But the higher you climb a tree, the more difficult it is to keep yourself in balance. You should know that we live in such a world. (98-232)
We know that there have been two ways in history. Wherever a good man is, there must be an antagonist. When you are doing good things, you must face opposition as well. Historically, our society has not been on the side of goodness, but hostile to goodness. Because of that, it is not easy to practice goodness, but easy to commit evil. You should remember that you are in such a social situation where it is more difficult to do one good thing than ten wicked acts.
Thus, evil established its foothold from the historical backdrop and dominated the actual state of beings today, and wants to subjugate the future of the world we are seeking for. If you assumed a wait-and-see attitude and escaped from this social trend, the new world we are looking for could not be realized. Therefore we cannot make ourselves good individuals. Without good individuals it is impossible to form a good family. Without a good family it is beyond the range of possibilities to build a good nation or world. (54-12) |